News

How the iTunes Music Store and FairPlay works

By Dennis Lloyd ● Friday, April 23, 2004

Teenage writer, coder, and hacker Aaron Swartz has published a technical article on the behind-the-scenes look at the iTunes Music Store, including how Apple implements the FairPlay DRM (Digital Rights Management). “This document explains how the iTunes Music Store works. This information is useful to computer science researchers, cryptographers, and politicians, who may be curious to understand the largest deployed DRM system to date.”

Comments

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Posted by http://matthewwanderer.com in Irvine, CA on April 24, 2004 at 8:39 AM (CDT)

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Aaron Swartz seems to be a young but very intelligent guy, the rest of his site contains some very interesting material for a teenager.

Posted by iPOD in Irvine, CA on April 25, 2004 at 7:04 AM (CDT)

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“This information is useful to computer science researchers, cryptographers, and politicians, who may be curious to understand the largest deployed DRM system to date.”

Bah! Sounds more like a way to subtly inform people of a way to break the 3-computer authorization system.

Posted by The Raven in Irvine, CA on April 25, 2004 at 7:09 AM (CDT)

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“Bah! Sounds more like a way to subtly inform people of a way to break the 3-computer authorization system.”

That is exactly what it should be looking to do.

Posted by What we need in Irvine, CA on April 25, 2004 at 7:22 AM (CDT)

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You can already store your FairPlay music on UNLIMITED computers. You just can’t be PLAYING the songs on more than three at the SAME time. Meanwhile, you can store AND play on unlimited iPods at the same time as those three computers.

How many songs does one buyer need to hear simultaneously? (Oh, wait—there’s no limit to that either, play one in iTunes and as many as you like in QuickTime.)

As for switching authorization to a different computer, that’s already one-click simple and instant.

Regardless, it’s interesting to read a little more of how it all works—and without Apple needing you to be online to play your music (as I find some people mistakenly think.)

Posted by Nagromme in Irvine, CA on April 25, 2004 at 11:39 AM (CDT)

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“How many songs does one buyer need to hear simultaneously?”

Well, let’s see, if I am married with several <18 children, then comunity property reights would seem to indicate that I, my wife, and all six of my children should be able to sumultanesouly make use of a song that I have “bought”, at various times, in different locations within the community property.

i can do that with ripped CDs->MP3s, I can’t do that with iTMS product. That’s because of DRM, and that sucks.

Posted by Fair Use in Irvine, CA on April 25, 2004 at 12:37 PM (CDT)

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It’s a shame DRM is needed then… especially for all those sextuplets :)

Posted by Nagromme in Irvine, CA on April 25, 2004 at 1:31 PM (CDT)

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cant you just burn it to a CD and rip it to other computers….wouldnt that take it away or no?

Posted by John in Irvine, CA on April 25, 2004 at 2:39 PM (CDT)

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John, it would work, but you could argue that this degrades sound quality in an already lossy format.

Posted by iBookiPod in Irvine, CA on April 25, 2004 at 3:26 PM (CDT)

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“How many songs does one buyer need to hear simultaneously?”

What is the chance that all 8 of you would:
*Be listening to the same track at the same time
* Have the same tastes in music

Its unlikely you would have more than 3computers and you can put it on as many iPODs as possible.

Yes this way of doing things can be annoying but its the way the music industry are happy with atm.